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It’s late August. Warm and bright and green, just before the sun would begin its descent behind the trees.
He and his dad sit together on the old wooden porch swing, each with a bottle of beer. Dean hasn’t quite acquired the taste for it yet, but he will.
“Hey, Dad?”
John’s eyes don’t leave the horizon. They’re red-rimmed and weary, and not from too much to drink.
“I--” Dean takes a breath, swallows more beer that burns his throat and makes him feel sick. He needs to be okay, he needs to, because John and Sam are not. “I think somebody should drive him up there.”
“He got himself into college on his own; he can get himself there, too.”
“Dad, please,” Dean nearly begs, voice cracking and chest tightening. “I'll take him without you if you don't want to go, okay? I know you’re pissed-- I am too, but… I need to do this for him.”
John glances over at him then, looking hesitant. Heartbroken.
“Please.”
John’s hand comes down on his shoulder-- gentle and reassuring. It’s different. “You’re not running off anywhere I don’t know about, are you?”
“No, sir.” He’d barely scraped by well enough to land a GED. College had never been something on his radar, never something he’d cared about. Assuming Sam felt the same way had been a foolish mistake on both Dean and John’s part.
John nods, wraps his arm around Dean and pulls him closer like he’s afraid the wind might sweep Dean away. They aren’t usually like this (at least not with each other; with Sam they’re both a little softer). But as John presses a kiss to the crown of Dean’s head, Dean understands. It’s never easy to lose your family, especially when you’ve been holding onto them with everything you have.
“Pretty sure the move-in day for freshman is the 20th. You can drive him up that weekend, if you really want to.”
John wouldn’t know that intuitively, Dean realizes. John had looked at the school calendar, Dean realizes. John is still looking out for his boys.
“Thank you.”
“Just-- you come home, Dean.”
“I will.”
-
Sam spends the next two weeks packing his bags and blowing off steam. Dean watches from a safe distance while Sam runs laps in the backyard, shoots empty cans off of tree stumps and branches, and kicks at the dirt with the toes of his sneakers. Dean doesn’t blame him; Sam will unofficially be out of the family come next Monday, all because he wants to go to school. The kid deserves to stomp around a little bit.
It’s the day Sam starts throwing punches at the wooden fence that Dean decides to step in. He gets up from the kitchen table and stands by the screen backdoor to shout into the backyard.
“Sammy!”
Sam startles, hazel eyes wide and still with lingering anger. His knuckles are already bleeding.
Dean gestures for Sam to get his ass in the house and keeps his surprise to himself when Sam complies. He’s fuming, the tips of his ears are red, and Dean half-expects steam to start coming out of him, but he’d listened. It’s better than nothing.
Dean steps aside, and Sam slams the screen door shut behind him. He’d always been a slamming-doors kind of kid.
“You wanna yell at me some more?” Sam's tone is demanding and aggressive and, frankly, nothing that Dean isn't used to by now.
“What? No, no--” Dean reaches for Sam’s hands and relaxes a fraction when Sam doesn’t yank away. “You were getting a little nuts out there, that’s all.”
“Sorry,” Sam mutters.
“Wasn’t fishing for an apology. Let’s get you cleaned up, okay?”
Sam sits on the sink, legs dangling off the edge of the counter like he’s five. Dean feels Sam’s eyes on him as he dabs a rubbing-alcohol-soaked cotton ball over the scrapes and cuts on Sam’s hands. The tension has gone out of his little brother now, which he’s thankful for. He doesn’t like seeing Sam upset.
“So,” Dean breaks the silence, “I think I’m driving you to Palo Alto this weekend-- if that’s alright with you.”
Sam is quiet for a bit longer, watching Dean go around and around his knuckles with a bandage. Dean’s stomach is in knots and he tries not to breathe too fast. Then Sam nods, murmurs, “thanks, Dean,” and relief floods Dean’s chest.
It’s only a few days, it’s practically nothing, but he’s bought some time. Delayed what he isn’t sure he’ll be able to take once it finally comes.
-
The much-dreaded morning turns out to be a beautiful one; a cloudless sky as far as the eye can see, but without the oppressive Kansas heat that will start beating down around noon.
Sam is shaking as he puts his last few things into his backpack. Dean doesn’t make fun of him, doesn’t tell him that no one’s making him do this, and he doesn’t ask Sam to reconsider. He knows how much good that would do.
“Sam.” Their father is by the stairs, still in his clothes from the night before-- he must not have slept, Dean thinks-- arms folded over his chest and looking ready to put the fear of God in his youngest son. Sam is pale and clammy with the anxious, sick-to-his-stomach look that Dean has developed an instinctive response to.
“Dad, don’t--” He starts, fully prepared to take whatever bullet John has waiting for Sam.
“No, I wanna hear it,” Sam cuts him off, and the dead quiet of his voice sends chills down Dean’s spine. “What do you wanna say to me?”
The underlying challenge in the question is almost physically painful to hear.
“You walk out that door now, son,” John says, the word son sounding like a curse, “I don’t want you trying to come back, you hear?”
Sam’s nostrils flare, and it’s barely seven in the morning and they’re already doing their back-and-forth bullshit, and Dean wishes he could make them stop. Just for today, just for when everything feels like it’s falling apart.
“I hear you,” Sam replies, taut and barely contained. “And you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Dean exhales as Sam throws his backpack over his shoulder and marches out the door, leaving it wide open for Dean to follow.
“Dad, he’s a nervous wreck,” Dean points out, but nothing is going to sway his father in being a little kinder. “You couldn’t stow your shit for a few minutes?”
John’s eyes shoot daggers, but they’re duller when he’s got tears running down his face. He ignores Dean’s comment and says, “I expect you back by Tuesday morning,” before retreating back upstairs. No doubt to mourn in peace for a son that’s still breathing.
Dean wipes a hand over his face, does a quick survey of the room to make sure Sam hasn’t left anything, and locks the door behind him on his way out.
The drive should take about a day, what with the way Dean usually drives and the Winchesters’ ability to stay holed up in a car for extended periods of time without breaks. Except Dean takes his time with this drive. He wants to make it last.
Sam’s bags are in the backseat, where he and Dean used to sleep against each other when they were younger, because the trunk has been reserved as the artillery since either of them can remember. Sam himself has calmed down… sort of. He’s stopped trembling and there’s color in his face, and he doesn’t seem one wrong move away from exploding in anger or bursting into tears. He’s quiet, though, almost timid, and it’s not in Sam to be timid.
“Hey, you doing alright?” Dean asks him as they cross into Colorado Springs.
Sam offers a shrug, fidgets with one of the strings on his hoodie.
“Listen, I’m-- I’m sorry about Dad.”
Sam shakes his head. “It’s not your fault. He’s not your responsibility.”
“But you’re my responsibility,” Dean protests, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. “It’s my job to keep you from getting hurt, even from Dad, and I shouldn’t have let him say those things to you.”
Sam’s eyes are fixed on the world rushing past the passenger seat window, solemn and heartbroken and hopeful all at once, and Dean doesn’t want to think about the drive back, when that passenger seat will be empty.
“Dean,” Sam murmurs, and Dean braces himself because Sam only uses that voice when his words are going to sting. “That’s not your job anymore.”
-
It’s almost 6 o’clock when they roll into Grand Junction. Dean’s been driving for eleven hours; he’s tired, his baby needs gas, and he’s starving.
Sam is sleeping, his head resting against the window and his legs drawn to his chest. Dean doesn’t want to wake him-- this might be the first time all week that Dean’s seen his little brother relaxed-- but he needs to eat. Sam probably needs to eat.
He takes the next exit and finds a decent enough place in less than five minutes. He’s gotta hand it to himself: he’s pretty damn good.
“Sammy.” Dean nudges Sam awake once he’s parked. “Sammy, we’re stopping.”
Sam stirs. “What?” He rubs his eyes, squinting out the windshield at their surroundings. “Why, what’s going on?”
“I'm in desperate need of a burger, that’s what.”
Sam looks doubtful.
“We’re only an hour out of Utah. We’ll stop here for a bit, I’ll drive us to Salina or Holden or somewhere around there, and then we can call it a night, okay?” Dean clapped a hand on Sam’s shoulder and got out of the car. “I’m gonna get you to Palo Alto, man. Don’t sweat it.”
Sam orders a sandwich—not enough food for a growing kid like him—but he doesn’t eat much, and it doesn’t get past Dean. Of course it doesn’t. Sam comes first, always.
Dean still hasn’t figured out what takes priority after Sam; he’s never had to consider that before now. He isn’t sure there is something else.
“Dude, you gotta eat.”
Sam nods but makes no move to follow through. Dean gives Sam the rest of his cola because Sam’s stomach gets weak when he’s anxious; Sam just looks at him with silent gratitude, taking slow and cautious sips.
They take the rest of the sandwich to go, and Sam picks at some of it in the car. Dean wants to reach over and smooth out the tension in Sam’s shoulders, tell him it’s okay to want a different kind of life, except he’s not sure it is.
Dean hauls ass the rest of the way to Holden and finds a motel, has Sam check the beds for roaches and bedbugs while he finishes paying at the front desk with a totally legit credit card.
“Going back to school, huh?” The man behind the counter asks, sliding over a receipt for Dean to sign, and Dean doesn’t hesitate for a second when he writes down a name that isn’t his.
“Just my brother, I’m driving him there,” Dean answers, tries not to think about how he might be in school too if he’d paid attention a little more, if he’d studied a little harder, if he’d been a little quicker to understand all the things that had been taught and if they hadn’t felt so unreal to him. He hadn’t seen the point of Calculus or English Lit when he could have been practicing how to stitch wounds or sparring with his dad.
He hadn’t seen the point to most things, actually.
“Headed to UC Boulder?”
Dean almost laughs because he’s got no clue what that is. “Uh, no,” he says, “he—he got into Stanford.”
The man’s eyebrows shoot up. “Really?”
Dean nods, and he can’t help the grin spreading across his face. Whether he liked it or not, he had to admit it was a damn incredible feat.
The man at the counter tells him congratulations and wishes him a good night, and Dean is left reeling with a strange sense of pride swelling in his chest along with the anger and the hurt. Sam got into Stanford-- his Sammy, his baby brother.
His baby brother is sitting on one of the twin beds, bouncing his knee up and down, up and down, staring at nothing when Dean makes it to the room.
“Hey, ground control to Major Tom,” Dean says, shrugging off his jacket and dropping down onto the bed across from Sam. “Seriously, man, what’s got you so juiced up?”
Sam shakes his head—not from a lack of insight, but because they both know that they already know.
“I can send you emails, you know,” Dean offers. “I mean, I don’t have one right now, but I can make one and—“
“What if I don’t belong there?” Sam cuts him off with a broken whisper, and Dean’s heart clenches. “What if all of this was for nothing?”
Dean would be lying if he says he hadn’t wondered that too. If Sam needed to get out, if he needed a home somewhere, he wouldn’t have one. John wasn’t letting him come back any time soon. Sam would be stuck, and Dean wouldn’t be able to do anything.
“Listen, okay?” Dean plants an elbow on his knee and leans over to brush the hair out of Sam’s eyes. “You’re gonna be great. Nobody loves school as much as you do.”
The smile Dean earns is small and wavering, so he presses on.
“And how many kids are there? Like, seven thousand, right?”
“Give or take,” Sam says.
Dean drops his hand to his other knee. “Well, there you go. Plenty of people to meet, plenty of chances to figure out where you wanna be.” Sam still looks unsure, and Dean musters up his firmest mom-voice, the one he uses when he needs Sam to trust him. “You’re gonna blow ‘em all away, Sammy, I know you will.”
Sam nods, rubs his clammy hands on his jeans to dry them, and goes to wash up in the bathroom.
Dean scrubs a hand over his face and hopes he can keep himself together until he’s driving out of Palo Alto alone.
-
Driving from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon will wipe out anybody, even an expert cross-country driver like Dean.
Sam hadn’t eaten breakfast—understandable, Dean’s never hungry that early in the morning either— but he’d started bouncing his knees again and that had been thirty minutes ago, and Dean had already been getting antsy, so he calls it.
“You’re gonna make me go nuts, Sam,” Dean says, pulling into the rightmost lane and starting on the exit ramp toward Reno. “You gotta eat and stretch your legs.”
“Dean—“
“Nope,” Dean quiets him. “Until Monday, what I say goes. And I don’t know about you, but I wanna see the National Automobile Museum.”
They end up walking around the museum for a good two hours, killing time as Sam slowly makes it through a PB&J and Dean talks his way through the halls.
“How do you know all this stuff?” Sam asks, and Dean responds with a simple, “I just know cars, Sammy.”
Dean might not have been that great in school the way Sam is, maybe not even been halfway decent, but he can do cars. Being a stunning mechanic isn’t a talent that comes with a lot of ego, but it’s a talent that’s come in handy more times than he can count at this point, so he’ll take it. And as complex as they are, they all feel familiar to him, and he always figures out what’s making them tick. He likes doing that; he likes being able to fix things.
Dean tells Sam about the ones they pass owned by icons, people like Lana Turner and James Dean and Elvis Presley.
“The guy was obsessed with Cadillacs,” Dean says, refraining from reaching out and running his hand over the glossy metal. “I think he bought at least two hundred in his lifetime. He’d give ‘em away to friends like they were dollar-store candy.”
Sam raises an eyebrow just a little bit as he smiles. “Didn’t know you were such a fan.”
Dean shrugged. “It’s generally not my kinda music, but I can dig Elvis.”
“I bet Dad’s got some tapes hidden somewhere,” Sam replies. Then his grin fades when it sets in.
Dean’s heart aches, but he swallows the feeling and throws an arm around Sam’s shoulders. “C’mon,” he says, steering him into another room and hoping the gloom hanging over them will blow past. “I wanna see if they got any Chevys.”
-
Sam had been pretty damn rattled the whole trip, but the actual breakdown kicks into full gear when they hit San Jose on Monday morning. Dean had torn his eyes from the road in one of his routine glances at his little brother, had seen the tears, and now they’re parked at a gas station. Twenty-five minutes from Palo Alto. Twenty-five minutes, Dean has twenty-five fucking minutes.
“You’re alright, Sammy,” Dean soothes as Sam tries for a deep breath and can’t manage it. Dean’s hand remains firm and still at the back of Sam’s neck, holding him steady and providing stability. “You gotta take it easy, man.”
When it becomes clear that Sam is not planning on taking it easy, Dean pulls him out of the passenger seat and hauls him off to the one-stall bathroom at the side of the station. It smells strongly of nothing in particular and everything at once, and it’s enough for Sam to snap out of it for a brief moment.
“What’re we doing in here?”
“Getting some privacy while you calm down,” Dean answers, and sits Sam against the wall. He hadn’t meant to sound insensitive—he’s in no place to belittle whatever Sam is feeling, considering he’d never experienced it and could never even imagine it—but Sam is already lost in his own head again and Dean doubts that Sam would notice if he was hit with a baseball bat.
Dean sits next to him, watches quietly as Sam crumbles, steel to rubble. This isn’t the kid who had rivaled their father in who could shout the loudest, who’d picked fights with bullies, who’d been a scary good shot for a scrawny beanpole with hair blocking his eyes.
Dean realizes that he hasn’t seen Sam this scared in years.
“It’ll be okay,” he murmurs, rubbing Sam’s back in tandem with the stuttering breaths coming from his little brother’s chest. “It’s gonna be okay.”
Sam exhales sharply, like he would be laughing if he had the spare oxygen. Unfortunately for Dean, Sam has always been able to see through bullshit.
“What do you need, Sam?”
He shakes his head, presses the heels of his hands against his eyes as if trying to stop the tears. “I can’t…”
“Anything,” Dean promises.
Sam hesitates.
“Just--” Sam buries his head in Dean’s shoulder, and Dean pulls his shaking body close and holds him tight.
“I don’t want to let you go,” he cries into Dean’s jacket, and if Dean’s crying too, it won’t hurt Sam not to know about it. He kisses the top of Sam’s head, completely emasculating the both of them and not caring even a little. How many more chances does he have to embrace moments like these? Moments when Sam accepts comfort instead of squaring his chest and forcing himself into adulthood, when Sam lets himself be a little brother, when it doesn’t feel like Sam is ashamed of him?
“You know what I’m thinking?” Dean asks, and he hears a muffled what’re you thinking from the crook of his shoulder. “It's barely 8 o'clock and we can show up for move-in day whenever, so I’m thinking we take a little detour.” He nudges Sam upright and checks for tears, wiping them away with calloused thumbs. “How’s that sound, huh?”
Sam sniffs and swipes the back of his hand across his eyes. His lashes stick together and darken from lingering wetness. “Where would we go?”
-
They’d left their shoes by the bank of the river, and their steps through the ankle-deep water create reverberations within the limestone cavern. Dean has a flashlight in one hand, the other itching to reach for the gun in his jacket pocket on the off-chance there’s something else with them in the dark.
“How’d you know this was here?” Sam is a couple feet ahead. He’s running his fingers over rough and ragged stone that makes up the walls, looking so much calmer than he’d been a half hour ago. Dean grins to himself; he likes doing this, he likes being able to fix things.
“Took a trip out here with Dad a long time ago, during those couple months we lived in Oregon. There was talk about a pack of werewolves, so we came and staked out for a couple nights.”
“And?” Sam turns to look at him, and he smirks.
“Just a couple of pissed-off mountain lions.”
Sam laughs and keeps wading through the water, guided by Dean’s flashlight. For a while, there are only the sounds of the river, its echoes, and the two brothers breathing.
“Hey, Sammy?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want, but, uh—“ Dean clears his throat, strives for some normalcy—“what’re you gonna do at school? I mean, like… what do you wanna be, you know? Do you have an idea?”
The fact he’s never asked that before is kind of disgraceful. Up until very recently, he’d been working off the assumption that hunting was going to be Sam’s future, too. That hadn’t exactly been fair to either of them.
“I don’t know,” Sam finally says after a long pause in which Dean panicked, trying to figure out if his question had crossed a line somehow. “At least, not entirely… If hunting taught me anything, though, it’s that I know I wanna help people.”
“So social work,” Dean prompts, catching up to Sam and falling into step with him. “Or do you wanna go into politics? Talk on national television and all that?”
“I said I wanna help people,” Sam responds without missing a beat, and Dean snorts. Smart as a whip, his little brother, and all he can think is how Sam must have gotten it from their mom. “Like maybe I’ll go into law or something.”
“Law,” Dean repeats. “Jeez, Sam, that’s pretty serious stuff.”
“I think I could do it,” Sam murmurs, and Dean jumps to correct his mistake.
“I didn’t mean you couldn’t. If anybody could take something as difficult as law and make it seem as easy as pie, it’s you.”
Sam smiles, radiant and genuine even in the dim light, and Dean’s heart soars and sinks at the same time.
“And if I ever get arrested, by the way, I fully expect you to be my attorney,” he adds, and Sam’s laughter ripples through the cavern.
They both pretend not to be sad when they have to turn around.
-
Sam is quiet when they roll into Palo Alto; fingers curled around his backpack’s straps, hazel eyes wide and bright, breathing in the sweet California air like he’d been dying without it. Dean, personally, can’t wait to leave the coast and return to more solid ground. The rolling waves of the ocean, infinite on the horizon, generate a fear that the entire state could tip off the edge of North America and plunge into the surf.
Sam is anxious enough as is, so Dean does his best to bury his own shit.
It’s a quaint city—or as quaint as a West Coast city can get. Picturesque and pristine, remarkably unlived-in. It has none of the rough edges or disheveled corners that Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, or even South Dakota has. It’s no one’s home. It doesn’t feel like a place where real people settle down and live; people will come and go, only leave one set of footprints, and Dean can’t figure out why Sam wants something like this.
Unless it’s the safety that comes with anonymity, blending in with the faceless masses and living life while lying low. Dean is all too familiar with that.
They come to a stoplight.
“It’s warm here,” Dean says, and it is. It’s a gentle heat, too, doesn’t penetrate so deep that your muscles burn and your blood sings.
Sam won’t look at him, and Dean isn’t sure what comfort he can offer even though this isn’t the first time he’s seen Sam feel guilty over his choices. (But it might be the last time.)
“Sammy.” Dean is earnest now. “C’mon, how are you gonna get any of these West Coast chicks when you’re looking all sad like that?”
Sam scoffs, tucks a stray curl behind his ear, and Dean briefly plays with the idea of arming his too-beautiful little brother with some pepper spray, a whistle, a goddamn machete before sending him off into a strange and daunting world where humans get hurt by other humans.
The light turns green and Dean reluctantly goes through the intersection, coming ever closer to their final destination, the last stop they’ll make together for a while. (Not for forever, though; Dean can't let himself think like that.)
“There any frat houses at Stanford?” He asks, not even a little surprised to find himself still hung up on hypothetical dangers.
“Yeah, why? You thinking of joining one?” Sam replies, clever as the devil and twice as pretty, and Dean is terrified Sam won’t survive a day out here. Terrified that he will.
“Very funny,” Dean manages around the anxiety in his throat. “And no, I’m not, just— steer clear of those guys, alright?”
“Never thought you’d tell me to avoid parties.”
“Sam, promise me.”
Sam’s brows furrow. “Okay, Jesus, I won’t go to any frat houses.” He must realize Dean is being dead serious, because he adds, “You really expect a freshman to be invited to one in the first place?” And the mood lightens.
Dean forces a classic, crooked smile, and it barely reaches his eyes. “You’d just stay in the library with your nerdy friends, anyways, wouldn’t you? Studying your asses off, getting real deep about The Odyssey or some crap.”
“I’ll mail you copies of all my essays as proof.” It’s a joke, Sam’s joking, his dimples frame his shit-eating grin and it’s a joke because Dean and John will have moved somewhere else before the leaves start turning colors, and Sam won’t know where home is anymore.
This is real. Dean is going to lose him.
“Nah, but you can call me if one of your teachers gives you a hard time. I’ll always find a way to get here if you need me.”
The honesty in Dean’s words doesn’t go unnoticed, and the smiles fall from both their faces.
“Thanks, Dean,” Sam murmurs.
Dean puts on the pair of sunglasses that took up residence in the pocket of the driver’s door. The sun is too bright, it’s making his eyes water.
-
The first thing that comes to Dean's mind when they pull onto campus is holy shit, this place is huge. He worries that Sam will get lost, disregarding the years of experience Sam has of finding his own way around bustling towns and intimidating public schools. Fraternal instinct lacks certain logic, but Dean had embraced that chaotic form of thinking a long time ago.
Sam seems to be doing everything not to let his jaw drop open. “I looked at pictures on their website, but…” Sam’s smile is so damn big and Dean is torn between pride and grief for what feels like the hundredth time in the last two days. “This is amazing.”
Dean finds a parking spot, Sam grabs his two duffel bags and his backpack crammed full of books, and the two of them observe the crowds of families going in and out of all the red brick buildings.
“Dean,” Sam says quietly, “will you—?”
Dean puts an arm around his shoulder and walks with him into the masses.
Sam’s hands don’t shake when he gets his room key, he isn’t pale and weak at the knees as they climb the stairs, and all he needs is a deep breath before he musters up to the courage to step inside his dorm room. Dean isn’t quite sure what Sam had asked him to be there for.
There’s someone already unpacked on one side of the room, and Dean bristles as douchebag sensors go off in his head simply from looking at the kid. He’s clean-cut, like one of those rich prep-school jackasses who used to sneer at Dean in the hallways in twelfth grade. Dean kind of wants to punch him just thinking about it, but he doesn’t actually know this kid, and Sam would never forgive him if he created a scene within a half hour of being on a college campus.
“Hey,” the boy stands to greet Sam with a handshake, and Dean notices with a small swell of pride that Sam is nearly three inches taller. “Tyson Brady.”
“Sam Winchester.” Sam smiles, one of the ones that show the dimples in his cheeks. Genuine.
Dean had been lost in his own train of thought, trying to assess Tyson Brady, but at the words and this is my brother, Dean, he snaps back to reality so fast he nearly gives himself whiplash.
“Good to meet you, Brady,” he says, hoping the underlying current of you fuck with my baby brother and I’ll fuck up your face comes through loud and clear as they shake hands. What surprises him, though, is the lack of follow-up questioning; Brady doesn’t say a word about the absence of a mother or father, doesn’t ask why Dean isn’t at college, doesn’t poke or prod into details the way Dean had been preparing himself for.
Brady offers to help Sam unpack his stuff, which Sam declines graciously because it’s two duffle bags and a backpack and Sam knows better than anybody outside the Winchester family how to pack and unpack in record time. Dean sits at what’s soon to be Sam’s desk, talks to Brady about stuff that parents would probably talk about (Dean’s gotten good at that-- imitating parents), and watches out of the corner of his eye as Sam methodically recreates himself in this dorm room.
And when Sam is rebuilt, when his clothes and books and everything in between is put in its place, when the few pictures he has of him and Dean and John are taped to the wall over his bed, when Sam surveys his work and lets his eyes settle on Dean, it’s time to go. It’s time for Dean to go.
“Alright, well, I’ll—“ Dean’s on his feet and making his way to the door, but it doesn’t feel like he’s getting anywhere. “I’ll head out. Car’s parked in the red, I think, so—“
Sam grabs him by the arm and pulls him close, latching tight onto the back of Dean’s leather jacket, and Dean hasn’t fought this hard not to cry since he learned why he wouldn’t get to see Mom again.
Can’t he quit losing his family, just for a little while?
“Love you,” Sam whispers, and Dean tries not to break his little brother’s ribs from holding him too tight.
“Love you more, kiddo.”
It’s Dean who breaks away first, because somebody’s gotta do it and he doesn’t think he’d be able to take it if Sam let go instead. “I’ll try to call, okay? At least once a week.”
Sam nods. His eyes are dry and there really isn’t that much to say.
“I’ll see you around, Sammy.” And it’s a promise.
Watching the campus grow smaller in the review mirror and knowing his little brother is still there, it's painful—so painful that he has to stop on the shoulder of the El Camino Real for a few minutes just to catch his breath.
Maybe the farther away he gets, the more distance he covers, the less it’ll hurt. The grief will fade and he’ll move on.
He’s crossing back into Kansas and it’s still there.